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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
All in all, an enjoyable evening.
When I heard multi-state blackout, I thought, "I'm in NYC after 9/11 and no power. What does it mean?" But we just trudged back to our hotel (the aptly named New Yorker). Hundreds of people sat listlessly in the lobby floor as the hotel had no backup generator.
After a couple of hours, we realized the power wasn't coming back. I went out, bought the last apples from a stand, got free water from a church (every business had clanked down their iron gates at the first loss of power) and found a guy with a bodega that had a gas-fired pizza oven. I bought one.
We finally got up to our room, reunited with other parent/son, and sat out on our little balcony, in the sweltering heat and watched thousands mill around Penn Station (right by the hotel), the lights of New Jersey beckon us and the sight of the mighty NYC slide slowly into darkness with just the swish of flashlight beams illuminating the dark, dark streets.
I was thinking about our place on Smith and Degraw today. Great neighborhood.
And the same situation occurred after Sandy and in other places.
The answer is the distributed or "soft" grid, with local generation from solar and fuel cells.
Welcome to the
California Stationary Fuel Cell Collaborative
http://www.casfcc.org/
The power did not come back on so after night fell, we walked to Times Square to check it out. I will never forget it - by 2003, most of the advertising signage there had converted to LED boards, and without power, they were all featureless black tombstones covering every building. The only light in the square were from the ABC Studios which appeared to have pulled lights out into the street for broadcasting. (they clearly had generator power)
Mobile phones were out from almost the beginning, and land lines died in about 8 hours. I crashed at my coworker's place where we drained his fridge and played blackjack by candlelight (this was before the hold 'em poker craze). The next morning I walked downtown until I found a bus going to Brooklyn. When I got home, I found my girlfriend who had been unable to contact me (and I her) - she had walked straight back home and into a blackout party in our building where she did not, allegedly, have fun, because she was worried.
I felt bad for not having been able to get ahold of her - we had no land line - but my coworkers and I work in IT and expected the blackout not to last long, and to have had to come back in ASAP.
We still got married the next year and still are, happily. But the work-life balance thing is still a problem for me.
We also lose our electricity every year or so in Santa Monica, when the winds are high.
Wouldn't it be nice if someone did something about our aging grids and infrastructure?
So overall was a fun, positive experience. The post-Sandy blackout, however, was a very different experience for everyone in SoPo (South of Power) land...
The main thing I'll take away is how quiet and dark Times Square was and how the Marriott Marquis kicked people out of their hotel and they were sleeping on the street. And how much I learned about co-workers that day. Some were chill; some were panicked and convinced the taxi drivers would fleece us in the morning trying to grab cabs to the airport; some were assholes who would not let Brooklyn based co-workers crash in their rooms; some became friends for life as the liquor flowed.
Newark Airport had full power the next morning. Taxi drivers were all swell and did not price gouge. My boss paid the bar tab. All was well....and probably the bravest (or stupidest) thing I ever did was taking the generator-powered elevator back to my room on the 36th floor that night.
Please stop using fiction to push your pet project.